Optical, Electro-Optical, and Dielectric Properties of Acrylic Tripropyleneglycol Based Polymer Network Systems Including LCs

Polymer/liquid crystal (LC) films were elaborated by photopolymerization using UV radiation of mixtures made up of a LC, a monomer and a photoinitiator. Three acrylic difunctional tripropyleneglycol based monomers possessing the same chemical structures were studied. The monomer/LC films exhibit distinguished morphologies presenting specific LC domain sizes, which were observed by polarized optical microscopy. These results were correlated with the electro-optical responses of the corresponding polymerized/crosslinked systems. A detailed characterization by linear dielectric spectroscopy of monomers and corresponding polymers was carried out as a function of temperature in the frequency range from 20 Hz to 1 MHz.